Obscured by Clouds. The rough and ready blog of a cloud benighted biologist and amateur astronomer. Astroblog will cover my interests in astronomy, biology and Life, the Universe and Everything.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Phobos Grunt Updated Predictions

While still having very large error bars, the predictions for the Phobos Grunt reentry are becoming more certain.

Most predictions are still for 15 January UT, roughly around 20 h UT but with spreads of error on the order of 9 hours to one and a half hours (see here, here,here and here for a variety of predictions). The tightest prediction now puts the re-entry off the coast of Africa.

From Australia's point of view, the spacecraft will come down sometime on early Monday 16th, CalSky (and the Phobos Grunt site) has a pass over Adelaide at 6:54 am AEDST, with reentry at 7:12 AEDST +/- 3 hours. So it may be possible for Australians to see the craft-reenter.